John (or is it Matt?) Stater puts out a lot of gaming material, but one of his more overlooked stuff is his Nod magazine which features varied material for his (and OSR in general) games - new classes, monsters, and adventures.

NOD 23 features the beginning of the India-inspired Ende hex crawl, the
end of the Dungeon of the Apes adventure, a random list of weird things
to do with wizard brains, Thor vs. the Monster Maids - a new hero and
villain for Mystery Men! and four new mythic races inspired by Indian
mythology. 64 pages, $3.99

Yeah, this is not news. But when there are slow periods, I thought I'd post other things I find interesting.

In this case, it's about one of the things that many people find odd about AD&D, how Druids would have to fight other Druids at higher levels. Where did this idea come from? Apparently not reality, though I'm not an expert on Druidic folklore.

But that combat happens in an old Shadow novel, #190, the Circle of Doom, about a group of modern day Druids (kinda).

Reaching to a tree that fringed the nearest monolith, the hooded leader plucked away a small bough. He advanced to the fire, dipped the branch of evergreen into a cauldron that bubbled on the flames. When he raised the bough, it was dripping, and its color was that of gold!
"Who holds the golden bough," declared the Hood in his deep, harsh voice, "shall be master. Let anyone who challenges such authority step forward and wrest the bough from the hand that bears it!"
There were no takers from the crowd of Hoods. Either they feared their
chief, or were satisfied with his leadership.

Later the Shadow does fight with the head druid for leadership of the circle. Was the idea invented just for that scene? Or did the author pick it up somehwere?

Ghost Ship of the Desert Dunes An adventure in HYPERBOREA designed for 4–6 characters of 2nd through 4th level...

Text: Jeff Talanian Cover Art: Charles Lang Interior Illustrations: Johnathan Bingham Editing: David Prata Cartography: Andreas Claren
Somewhere in the depths of the Diamond Desert lie the skeletal remains
of Ymir's Serpent, a legendary Viking longship. In days of yore,
Sigtrygg Forkbeard led his company upriver, piercing the desert's
hostile heart. There the Vikings unearthed a lost mine brimming with
green diamonds, but as the Serpent prepared for departure, the river
went dry and the ship was swallowed by the dunes. Forkbeard and company
were never to be seen again, but tales of a shimmering Viking ghost ship
gliding over the dunes persist to this day.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

John Stater who produced one of my favorite retro clones, Blood & Treasure, has now announced Bloody Basic. It seems to be a simpler, streamlined version that will come in different flavors or themes, such as one based on Fairy Tales and one for the modern day.

(Okay, you probably could have read this on my blog feed to the right, but I think it's still newsworthy)

Arrows of Indra is an old school renaissance (OSR) game set in Mythic India. If you know old school D&D, Arrows of Indra is probably closest to Original D&D (the little brown books, aka OD&D) with the 1st supplement (Greyhawk) in how it plays. So like more like Swords & Wizardry than anything else, especially as it only uses a single saving throw. But with some 1e conventions, like fighters having d10. There are also some things taken from 3e, such as ascending armor class (though that was originally in the 1990 version of Gamma World) and the skill system. Also quite different is the magic system, it's not "Vancian" where characters must memorize spells beforehand.

One of the more amusing things about OSR gaming is that seemingly there are more new rules sets than adventure modules. Thankfully, a few people are making adventure modules, some for specific gaming systems, but others, like Liberation of the Demon Slayer from Venger As’Nas Satanis (I'm guessing that's not his real name) are simply written with vague old school stats.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Perhaps that is overstating things a bit, but in the most recent update Alexander Macris has announced that he has completed the revision of James's draft and it's now going into proofreading stage, then layout.

As a backer, I honestly though I'd have it a couple years ago (I think Summer 2012 was the target date?) so it's nice to see some light finally at the end of the tunnel. It hasn't really been that bad, a draft version was available fairly early on, and I got free PDFs of ACKS and ACKS Player Companion....

Sunday, April 6, 2014

This is the first in hopefully a long series of posts examining free retro clones. If they are free, why not just download them for yourself? Good question, but what I really want to do is call attention to them in the first place,

First up is Seven Voyages of Zylarthen by Oakes Spalding. It's a take on OD&D, but an OD&D without clerics. Why no clerics? I don't know, a lot of people don't like clerics. But anyone can turn undead.

It's also OD&D in the strictest sense, more akin to the original 3 booklets sans the later supplements (most notably Greyhawk), and only slightly less confusing in how to play.

Probably not for most people, but it's very well done, with some interesting options and details for combat.

Ever since the release of B2 Keep on the Borderlands, many low level modules have taken the basic premise of describing a small fort or town and then a nearby adventuring locale.

Stonepick Crossing, an OSRIC module from Expeditious Retreat Press, condenses this, by essentially combining the adventuring location with the home base. Stonepick Crossing itself is a small town set atop of a dam built by dwarves long ago in order to flood a cavern of goblins. That last bit of detail is mostly irrelevent, but the town itself is basically itself a small dungeon. That is, the top part of Stonepick Crossing is a town, the middle part is part town, part dungeon, and then the lowest level is a dungeon.

So none of that pesky overland travel to get in the way. That could be a plus or a minus, actually, depending on if you like that or not. Instead, it's more something of a mystery. Local inhabitants have gone missing. Presumably the PCs will investigate. It's not a particularly deep mystery, with the PCs getting a direct clue to the culprit. But then unrelated to that, there is a small dungeon. Well, rather, two small dungeons.

All in all, there are 70 keyed locations, about 45 for the town and the rest for the dungeons and villain. Considering the module is only 12 pages, that's comparatively packed, and the level of detail is actually decent.

At the same time, given the price for the module ($12 print, $6 pdf), it's a little skimpy, at least the adventure portion. It will do for a session at most, and not a long one at that.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

A lot of Kickstarters seem to simply rehash old material, usually for Pathfinder. The City of Barakus from Frog God Games is no different, originally coming out in 2004 for 3e.

Like most of Frog God's products, this comes in two versions, one for Pathfinder and one for Swords & Wizardry. Unlike most Frog God products, this is reasonably priced, $40 for a hardcover. It's also probably the best sandbox adventure Necromancer Games put out.

About This Site

As a long time D&D fan who was lured back and then disappointed by the 5e announcement, I was thrilled to discover there was a whole bunch of people making products for old school versions of the game, either adventures and sourcebooks, or variations of the old rules.

But there was little in the way of news about new products, other than scattered comments on various message boards and sometimes not even that. So I thought I'd collect all the news I could find, as well as write the occasional review.

If you happen to have any news pertaining to OSR products, drop me a line at trancejeremy at yahoo.com